SATA 3.0 may have been available to consumers for the past couple of months, but the number of hard drive options out there are ultra-slim... just one. That drive is Seagate's Barracuda XT. The question we're looking to answer here is whether or not the $100 premium for SATA 3.0 is worth it, at least on a mechanical offering.

Unregistered: I agree, that would be a great comparison. We're kicking things off a bit slow, though, and don't have immediate plans to tackle RAID, given we have a lot of catching up to do with regards to popular single-drive models on the market. We'll definitely be covering RAID as soon as we're able.

I have wondered about using a defragger with just 10% of the capacity in use. My experience so far is scaring me away from 1 TB HDs much less 2 TB.

When you get to the RAID configurations, I wonder how long a RAID 1 will take to rebuild with varying percent of drive storage used? The simulation is 1 drive failing & dropping the replacement for the rebuild.

I appreciate the access time improvement of RAID 0, but the thought of a crash causes a pit to form in my stomach. Maybe even some argument of RAID 10 versus 01 ... for any reviewed drives? I am neophyte relative to RAID.

RAID 0 makes no sense what-so-ever with any two drives with more than 300GB each in my opinion. There is no advantage and you have alot more to lose as in data than speed to gain. RAID 1 is even becoming of lesser importance with the availability of good mid-range RAID cards in the $300 range that will do the job. Again, RAID using a motherboard controller is hardly what I would trust with ANY data in any form since a failed motherboard would require an identical motherboard for recovery purposes. Any way you look at it, RAID still makes little sense in the mainstream and home user category. Possibly a few small SSD's could be fun if you have the cash to spend...

I have to agree with the on-board RAID statement... I don't think I'd trust it that much. As for RAID 1, I'm not too sure I even care that much about that, although that's just me. I back-up data out the rear, so if the main HDD in my PC crashes, I just need to re-install the OS and copy the data back over. For those who don't like proper backup, then RAID 1 might be fine... even on an on-board RAID controller, that might be fine, given it's just mirroring the data.

As for defragging, it might take a while, but I think that's where products like O&O and PerfectDisk shine, as they're able to schedule defragging runs, or defrag in the background while the PC is idle. It's better to do things this way rather than to wait a month and then do it all at once.